I’ve been back into cycling for about 5 years now. I started back on the old (not-so) trusty $200 K-mart MTB I had sitting around in the garage before splashing out on an entry level flat bar roadie that met its end when I was unfortunately hit by a car while commuting. That brings me to my current alloy roadie. It’s the best bike I’ve ever owned and for Xmas 2014, after having really taken to cycling over the previous couple of years, I got a Garmin Edge 510. That thing has been tracking my commutes and social rides flawlessly ever since, so when the opportunity to review the Bryton came up I thought I’d be in a great position to offer an all-round review and also add some comparisons to the Garmin Edge 510.

The Bryton Rider 100 is a very nicely packaged unit and we all know that presentation is important! It is much smaller in size than my Garmin Edge 510, but then most things are!

I initially set up the Bryton Rider 100 on my roadie to compare it in the wild against my Garmin Edge 510 on the same rides. The Bryton Rider 100 displayed seamless integration with my Garmin HRM and Speed/Cadence monitor - even picked them up on the fly. Over the same rides, the statistics were within acceptable tolerances where they weren’t the same. My average commute is a bit over 18km each way and in all types of weather. The Bryton stood up as well as my Garmin has over the past couple of years. Outside of commuting my rides are a range of 15-20km MTB rides on trails at Lysterfield and the like to 50-100km+ road rides with a couple of mates, a bunch or a mass participation ride.

The Bryton Rider 100 display has easily understandable pages. However; they are not editable which is a bummer when compared to my Garmin Edge 510 which enables me to customise how many pages and the details I display on those pages. It’s not a deal breaker for most commuters and weekend social riders. The Bryton display is a 1.6” mono LCD screen whereas the Garmin Edge 510 has a colour touchscreen with a resolution of 176x220 px. Both are water rated as IPX7. The Bryton display is ample for my needs and is more closely aligned in size to the Garmin Edge 500. The backlight is bright enough and it has similar features to the Edge 510 to change the duration of the backlight before turning it off.

The unit has a fairly simple user interface, but it must be said it is not the most intuitive. The user guide provided is not that great for functional information either (try Google for more information). 3 buttons on the entire device mean that you will get used to scrolling. You’ll need to use your knowledge of international symbols for stop/pause/record (start) and down. Interestingly the only direction you can navigate is downwards. If you miss your stop, you’re going around again! Once set up it was quick to boot up and find GPS satellites. Once it’s booted up, the no nonsense 3-button operation gets you underway in no time flat.The smaller locking mechanism meant that it was not compatible with my Garmin mounts. Plenty of o rings are provided to get you out of trouble with the supplied mount.

Similarly, the included cadence sensor and magnet are easily mounted with the included cable ties. The Bryton Rider 100 picked up the cadence sensor immediately when rescanned. Bluetooth connectivity to my mobile phone was also simple and effective to upload files on the fly via the Bryton app.

You can setup up to 2 bike profiles and it’s a simple enough function to switch between them as needed. I set one for my road bike and one for my MTB without issue.

Battery life when used with external monitors is comparable to my Garmin Edge 510 (~10 hours +). This was great as my commute is roughly 45 minutes each way which means I get at least a week of commuting out of it before needing to recharge. So I still had enough charge to jump straight on the MTB after a week of commuting. If only rechargeable lights had that sort of capacity!

The Bryton website is not up to scratch when compared to Garmin Connect, Strava and Endomondo. Once again, it’s not a deal breaker considering you can import your data to Strava or your preferred tracking website.

For significantly less than a Garmin Edge 510 and the ability to purchase with any combination of HRM, cadence sensor, speed sensor, cadence/speed sensor, NONE, the Bryton Rider 100 is definitely a real alternative. For those that are happy to take the default (only) details on each page and don't want/need extra pages of data this is a winner. It’s packed with features, is a sturdy unit, comes in a number of packages and will give you many hours of ride recording. What more could you want?

Who is online

About the Australian Cycling Forums

The largest cycling discussion forum in Australia for all things bike; from new riders to seasoned bike nuts, the Australian Cycling Forums are a welcoming community where you can ask questions and talk about the type of bikes and cycling topics you like.